All the Way Home
by ncfan
Summary: The story of a child who's still learning how to feel, and of three people who love her. .: Ishida x Nemu; Nanao, Ukitake :. Three stories within a story.


**Characters**: Nemu, Nanao, Ishida, Ukitake**  
Summary**: The story of a child who's still learning how to feel, and of three people who love her. .: Ishida x Nemu; Nanao, Ukitake :. Three stories within a story.**  
Pairings**: Ishida x Nemu; I'll admit it's a bit subjective, but I meant to write it as a pairing.**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers for Soul Society arc.**  
Timeline**: No time in particular.**  
Author's Note**: Nothing to report here, but there'll be a big fat author's note at the bottom.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

**1**

Through Nanao, Nemu has been doing a great deal more shopping than usual lately when the rare day off comes. Nanao has recently gotten it into her head that Nemu needs to spend more time outside, fussing about how pale she's gotten spending all her time inside Mayuri's laboratory. Nemu would like to point out that as pale as she is, Nanao is paler, but feels that it would be impolite and holds her tongue.

When Nanao came to collect Nemu this morning from the Twelfth division, Mayuri attempted to protest with some heat that he needed Nemu's assistance in the laboratory. Then Nanao adjusted her glasses, letting the light shine off of them, and Mayuri backed off with astonishing alacrity, especially for him. Nemu found it a spectacle and wondered if she should step in and defend Mayuri, but Nanao carried her off before she could string two thoughts together.

Rukongai doesn't part for the two seemingly young women in yukatas, one royal blue and the other a dull crimson red, and, Nanao keeping a watchful but gentle hand on Nemu's wrist, makes a path for them as the shorter of the two girls guides Nemu towards her favorite book store.

Nanao's face is far less severe when she isn't on duty; for now, she's sporting an open smile, one that doesn't show teeth (Nanao never smiles with her teeth, and Nemu doesn't know why) as she shows Nemu into the book store.

"The library in Seireitei is nice," Nanao explains, slightly breathless, "but it's nice to have books I don't have to worry about checking back in too."

Nemu can't find anything to argue against that, as much as she would like to.

Later, they are sitting on a bench besides a rushing fountain, in the first district of eastern Rukongai; Nanao's gotten something for them both to drink, and Nemu is sipping pensively on her drink, the taste frothy and yet pleasurably sweet. Nemu frowns slightly. She doesn't normally like sweet things, but this is very pleasant.

Nanao's stack of books is much larger than Nemu's. Nanao likes biographies, books on military history and works of fiction and non-fiction concerning a legendary figure known as King Arthur (Nemu happens to know that a trilogy of books by Bernard Cornwell are Nanao's favorites), and has gotten a couple from all categories; Nemu just bought two medical treatises and a book concerning the properties of plants found commonly in Rukongai.

Relaxed from her usual stern persona, Nanao seems happier in Rukongai than she does in Seireitei, and Nemu shyly ventures, "Ise-fukutaicho, I may be mistaken but you seem to be happier out here."

Bluish violet eyes meet Nemu's deep emerald ones in the bright sunlight, as Nemu starts fidgeting with the skirt of her crimson yukata out of self-consciousness. Nanao nods eventually, her smile smaller than it has been. "Yes… I guess I am. Out here, there's no paperwork, no subordinates coming to me with tales of woe, no reports to file out—" Nanao's face sours slightly, but at the same time, a distinctly mischievous glint gleams in her eyes and her glasses lenses "—and no Kyouraku-taicho hovering over my shoulder and trying to get me in bed with him."

The story of Shunsui and Nanao has gotten to be somewhat legendary around Seireitei, and while all know that Shunsui has never once forced a woman in his life, most people are taking bets on how long it's going to take Shunsui to succeed (it's unknown if Nanao—discreet and close-mouthed about such matters—is a virgin, so the bets are not on whether or not Shunsui will succeed in deflowering his lovely young lieutenant) in winning over the aloof, icy Ise Nanao. Personally, Nemu isn't taking any wagers because she does not see the point in wasting her money, but she too is watching, waiting with a less than detached amusement, which is still unusual for her, but not unwelcome.

Nemu is starting to…feel more.

Momentarily, Nemu bites her lip before breaking back into conversation. "Well, perhaps we could visit the district of Rukongai you grew up in. I heard you were born in Rukongai." Nanao is one of the few residents of Soul Society who was actually _born_ in Soul Society.

A shadow passes over the older lieutenant's face. "No, I don't think so, Kurotsuchi-san. The district I hail from isn't the sort of place you'd want to be visiting." Nanao's tone brooks no further discussion.

Pink comes over Nemu's normally pale cheeks, or at least it would if not for the omnipresent foundation, covering up the purple marks on her face. Nothing shows through Nemu's make-up; Nemu wears more make-up than every other female Shinigami in the Gotei Thirteen, though not due to vanity, by any stretch of the word. Most of the other Shinigami are just under the impression that Nemu has an exceptional poker face. "I'm sorry," she apologizes earnestly. "I was not aware—"

Nanao holds up a hand. "Never mind. It's not your fault." She shores up another smile, more to reassure Nemu than to benefit herself. "If you're willing to carry your books, there's another place I want you to see."

Nemu can not help but find herself troubled by Nanao's sudden swing of mood. But as the day wears on, it's clear that she's shaken it off, so Nemu allows herself to be content as well.

**2**

Nemu decides that, if they were ever to meet, Ishida and Nanao would like each other. They are of similar enough personalities that they would probably share the same viewpoint on many issues, and they use the same wide vocabularies and employ the same inflections when they talk. They are both often prone to mask their stronger emotions and wants beneath their masks; Ishida, of stoicism and Nanao of professional calm. So even if they don't like each other, they would probably at least approve of each other.

They also look so much alike that it's scary, especially when they move one hand to adjust their glasses menacingly. The way Nanao wears her hair doesn't help; Nemu secretly harbors the suspicion that Ishida and Nanao must be related in some way, despite knowing how impossibly far-fetched that theory is.

"Hinamori-fukutaicho has taught me how to palm-read," Nemu points out, a hidden request in her words. "I'd like to have someone to try it out on other than Ise-fukutaicho and Matsumoto-fukutaicho."

Ishida takes the hint and relents. "Alright". The word comes with the faintest hint of an indulgent smile, as he offers out his left hand, palm up. They are sitting on a bench in the deserted park, the sky bright carmine red above them. A treeless, grassy field stretches out. Nemu and Ishida both like their silence, and say little when together.

Nemu takes his hand in her smaller one and stares intently. There's a long, even seam of a white scar on Ishida's palm, horizontal and running the length of his palm, positioned just above where his thumb meets his hand, and his palms and fingers are callused, but they provide little impediment to Nemu's close inspection. After a moment, she frowns.

"What is it?" Ishida inquires curiously, tilting his head to get a closer look at her face, poring over his upturned hand.

Nemu looks up at him, green eyes open wide. "You've a very short life line," she announces.

"That comes as no surprise to me, Kurotsuchi-san." Ishida speaks the words with a grave tone, but there's a brief glint of biting humor in his dark blue eyes that Nemu catches and shores up in memory. Biting humor is better than no humor at all.

"Well, that doesn't matter much. The length of a life line doesn't actually indicate lifespan."

As Nemu is examining Ishida's hand, she thinks.

Despite knowing who she is and who Mayuri is to her, Ishida makes no objection to her presence; they've befriended each other, grown close despite, in defiance of the shadow of Mayuri, which casts so thick a pall over both their lives. Nemu still can't help but marvel just a little bit at that, and once asked Ishida how he could reconcile all of this in his mind.

His only response is to look at her long and hard, a strange gleam of something Nemu can't recognize in his eyes. "Because you aren't him," he says finally, voice slow but firm and final. "And because I can tell the difference between the two of you."

Ishida never brings up Mayuri into their conversation, and for that, Nemu is grateful.

Nemu's fingers lightly steal across the skin of Ishida's palm. She is sensitive to touch, always; Ishida knows this, knows why, and never tries to touch her unless it's important.

Secretly, Nemu hopes that her make-up won't get messed up again. She can still remember what happened the last time that happened. Ishida and Ikkaku somehow met up, compared notes, and got some sort of bright idea that ended up landing Mayuri in the hospital for two weeks in a full-body cast. She can't have _that_ happening again.

On another of their meetings, not long after Nemu asks him why, Ishida is sitting, with a far-off on his face, as though he has been transported to another time and place. Nemu stares at him, and thinks that he looks very much like his grandfather when he does that.

For as long as he inhabits the underground, clandestine laboratory, Soken remains a mystery to Nemu. He has her sympathy, since she knows Soken's pain to be particularly intense, as he bears the brunt of Mayuri's wrath, who believes him to be the last Quincy left and, like all the others whom Mayuri has captured, possesses no knowledge of Ransoutengai. When he isn't screaming, Soken's eyes have that same far-off look, and Nemu realizes that he has carried himself off away on his memories to escape the pain.

Nemu never forgets. She bears silent witness to everything. Since Nemu alone attends Mayuri while he runs tests on his Quincy subjects, she alone carries on the memory of the last desperate gleam in the old man's eyes before the final blow falls. And while Mayuri forgot the name Soken called out in agony, Nemu did not; staring into panicked blue eyes one night so many years later, she knew who the boy she was falling with must be. _Grandson or student._ He ended up being both.

Ishida eventually shakes off his reverie, Nemu recalls, and looks at her. His voice is strangely low and urgent as he asks Nemu if she can recall, in the last twenty years, if she and Mayuri have ever come across a Quincy subject, a woman who looks like him. Small, black hair, blue eyes and pale skin.

Nemu is not unintelligent. The memory of seeing the remains of his grandfather in torment must continue to burn Ishida, inspire horror in him; the thought that something similar may have happened to his mother—for she realizes who Ishida is describing—must be even more wrenching. She answers honestly. She tells him "no".

The look of hope unbidden stealing across Ishida's face is enough to make Nemu have a disloyal thought and decide not to tell Mayuri to be on the lookout for a female Quincy in Rukongai—because when she's with Ishida she can catch brief glimpses of a life without Mayuri, and Nemu can't decide whether it fascinates or terrifies her. Nemu also decides that she likes the look of his face when he looks like that. Like someone's pulling a thick curtain back from the window of a dark room.

Then, Ishida does something that surprises Nemu, probably surprises himself and breaks the unspoken rule about no-contact. He hugs her. Nemu's ribs are sore and they scream from the unexpected pressure. She flinches noticeably. Ishida lets go, his face burning, and says nothing. Nemu thinks that if her ribs hadn't started protesting when they had, she wouldn't have tried to break free.

Memories clear from Nemu's mind like cobwebs being swept away with a broom; she's finished her inspection of Ishida's palm. "I'm done," she proclaims.

"Well?" In the red light, Ishida is encouraging of Nemu's somewhat frivolous pursuit. Anything to see that she's capable of normal activity.

Nemu launches into a clinical telling of what she's seen. "You on occasion suffer from bouts of ill health, and when you get sick, you have a harder time recovering than other people. Your father had a strong influence on you as a child—whether good or ill I can not tell." Ishida flinches at that (hit a little too close to home, and she can tell), and Nemu moves on. "You are a practical person and have little difficulty concentrating. Finally, you aren't good with emotions, and while said emotions run deep, you have difficulty expressing what you feel."

Ishida nods, bowing his head for a moment. "Tell me something I don't know." His attempts at humor are just as lame as hers. "I don't think, Kurotsuchi-san, that someone would have had to read my palm to know all of this." But at the same time, the effort of a smile crosses his face.

She returns with one of her own, intensely shy and dying before it can bloom, but it is there, the impression of a smile which memory will leave indelibly imprinted on Ishida's mind.

They are very similar, with their insecurities and their inadequacies and their quirks; all of this, along with their dying hopes and dreams—plants denied sunlight for too long and are now wilting away in the darkness—they see reflected in each other's eyes. Directly down to their issues with their fathers. Stories so similar that close inspection is needed to tell them apart.

They are both emotionally stunted.

It's why they get along so well.

**3**

A racking cough fills the air, and Nemu reaches over and hands Ukitake-taicho a glass of water, mute and wanting to be of help. Mayuri has banished her from the lab for the evening, dramatically declaring her to be nothing but a clumsy hindrance to his studies and getting a good kick in edgewise, and Nemu goes and sits with Ukitake-taicho, because she knows that there's no one to help him, all the others being too busy.

Nemu, on the other hand, has the whole night to herself.

Ukitake's eyes soften as she hands him the glass, and he casts a fond look in Nemu's direction as he drinks. "Thank you, Nemu-san."

Kneeling on her knees on the floor beside the pallet in Ukitake's office, Nemu nods wordlessly. She knows that out of all of the lieutenants, she is the only one Ukitake refers to by their first name. Rangiku and Nanao he refers to by their surnames because he feels it polite; with Rangiku, such a thing could be misconstrued, and Nanao despises being referred to by her first name. With the others, there's some sort of other excuse, but none with her. _Nemu-san._ As informal as one can get without being overly familiar.

Inevitably, Nemu's eyes are drawn to the stack of papers sitting on Ukitake-taicho's desk, seemingly growing higher with each passing moment. She knows that it's Sentarou and Kiyone's night off, and that they're probably off partying somewhere. She steps up, light-footed and silent, and plucks the papers and a pen and ink pot off of the desk.

At this, Ukitake sits up, coughing briefly but then speaking with a raw voice. "Oh, no, no, no, no, Nemu-san. You don't need to do that; just give the paperwork to me, with something to write with and bear down on." As Nemu does so, Ukitake murmurs, "I'm sure you have enough paperwork on your plate without doing all of mine, too."

As Ukitake continues to sign papers, read over mission reports and raise the "REJECTED" stamp to certain documents (a privilege, Nemu secretly laments, that belongs only to captains), he looks over the papers and smiles at her. "Do you spend all of your nights off this way, Nemu-san?"

Nemu deigns not to tell him that this isn't technically a night off for her. "I do not wish to partake in the officers' habit of imbibing sake on their night off," Nemu demurs, dipping her head in admission to Ukitake that, yes, her nights off do resemble this.

Ukitake abandons the paperwork for his water glass. "Well," he remarks over the brim of his glass, "while I am not complaining that you are here, perhaps Unohana-taicho's ikebana club would be to your liking. I know that Unohana-taicho is looking for new members, and it seems the sort of quiet, sober occupation that you would enjoy."

The lieutenant of the Twelfth division nods. "Perhaps."

Ukitake, Nemu knows, as much as Unohana regards the members of his division in much the same way as he would his children. And Nemu knows, at the same time, in the way someone simply _knows_ something without being told so, that Ukitake sees her the way one would see a particularly shy, introverted, but beloved all the same daughter. He wants her to get out into the world. Nemu knows this, but doesn't know why.

Seeing that Ukitake's water glass is growing low again, Nemu takes the earthenware pitcher and pours another glassful of water for the ailing captain's benefit. His throat screams a plea that can only be eased with the presence of smooth, cold water.

Nemu doesn't tell Ukitake-taicho that, on her nights off, she prefers to be here above anywhere else in Seireitei.

* * *

I would prefer for Ishida and Ikkaku ganging up on Mayuri to remain a bit of a Noodle Incident, so if you don't mind, please don't ask me to expand on it. I'm sure you can think up something sufficiently enjoyable on your own. Also, please don't tell me that I'm the only one who thinks Ishida and Nanao look ridiculously alike, especially in the manga.


End file.
